Why are textbooks so obscenely expensive in the USA?

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Pekka
You figure that's the first thing theyll teach kids to read as well? It's not working if they can't read. Images? That can cost a lot, plus with all the differencies in cultural context and whatnot, you never know what kind of an image you should relaly put there so...

MY NAME IS REBECCA. I DO NOT EAT.

How, precisely, does the Fourier transform of a function vary from culture to culture? Does the cardinality of the naturals change from Aleph Null to Aleph One if you move from the USA to India?

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by DaShi


Oye! Are you so desperate for an argument you can win that you'll take an obvious joke seriously?

[DaShi]

Originally posted by aneeshm

That should have been your response to my first post.

[Pekka]

You never know. If you put some fatass eating a cookie there will be law suits, "FAT PEOPLE ARE HUMAN TOO!" and "COokies, wtf? Cookies are the work of SATAN!". "WHY is that kid white/black/brown/yellow/etc"? "WH YCOOKIE THIS BOOK IS NOT COOKIE WHY CAN'T I EAT COOKIES? THIS BOOK SAYS SO."

YOu know... even the most simple things can become the most irritating and misunderstood. This is because people are idiots. Hey, if they weren't, you wouldn't have to print "DO NOT EAT" in the first place.

But since we're all about protecting idiots, this is the way it has to go.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Pekka
You never know. If you put some fatass eating a cookie there will be law suits, "FAT PEOPLE ARE HUMAN TOO!" and "COokies, wtf? Cookies are the work of SATAN!". "WHY is that kid white/black/brown/yellow/etc"? "WH YCOOKIE THIS BOOK IS NOT COOKIE WHY CAN'T I EAT COOKIES? THIS BOOK SAYS SO."

YOu know... even the most simple things can become the most irritating and misunderstood. This is because people are idiots. Hey, if they weren't, you wouldn't have to print "DO NOT EAT" in the first place.

But since we're all about protecting idiots, this is the way it has to go.

Here in India, we believe in maintaining the health of the race.

We believe in natural selection, as embodied by the adage,

"Remove all the warning labels, and let God sort them out."

[SlowwHand]

Buy them books and send them to school and what do they do? Eat the teacher.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by aneeshm


Here in India, we believe in maintaining the health of the race.

We believe in natural selection, as embodied by the adage,

"Remove all the warning labels, and let God sort them out."

So did someone else who liked Indian symbols.

[Pekka]

No wait, I got an idea.

What if we print out books taht says "eat me!" and people who become sick of eating a book, they just don't get anymore books because they don't need them anyway and books wouldn't have helped. Money saved.

[Elok]

I imagine they're cheaper over there because Indians can't afford/won't pay American prices. I know nothing about India (which is how I like it), but I imagine the people who work overtime milking horses or whatever so their kids can be the first in their family to attend college would set things on fire if they were charged the kind of prices we tolerate. We Americans are used to indebting ourselves outrageously for education, so what's another $400 or so a semester?

They're expensive over here because, unlike almost every other book purchase, which textbook to use is not decided by the person actually shelling out cash. It's decided by the professor, who probably gets a free promotional copy anyway, or by the department, which gets bombarded with free promotional copies by the publisher as part of their marketing campaign. So the decision of which textbook to use is based on the number of impressive names on the authors list, the color and number of fancy charts, the sophistication of those little CD-ROM supplements nobody ever uses, and pretty much everything else except price.

Plus college bookstores typically add a hefty markup of their own, since they're the only non-online source for these things and are almost guaranteed to have buyers no matter how obscene their prices. Most people leave off buying books till the last minute, which rules out ordering used copies online, and there are only so many used copies anyway. They come out with new editions every year or so (rendering a whole generation of texts obsolete and allowing professors to add another line of text to their list of published works), and lots of students are too lazy to bother selling their old books online. They just sell back to the college store for a terrible price at the end of the semester. College then turns around and sells the "used" books for about 90% of the new price.

SUMMARY for the tldr crowd: "Market forces."

[Geronimo]

google "why are textbooks so expensive" and you find multiple articles blaming it on the used textbook market stealing all the profits so they have to make the new textbooks more expensive to cope

I'd guess the reason for the difference between buying in India and buying in the states is simply market segmentation with the publishers simply trying to grab as much money as they can in each market.

[Pekka]

That's why they have to make a new edition as well, every year... with few typos fixed, two more pictures,, just enough that some of the page numbers won't match .

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Elok

I imagine they're cheaper over there because Indians can't afford/won't pay American prices. I know nothing about India (which is how I like it), but I imagine the people who work overtime milking horses or whatever so their kids can be the first in their family to attend college would set things on fire if they were charged the kind of prices we tolerate. We Americans are used to indebting ourselves outrageously for education, so what's another $400 or so a semester?

I pay around $1500 per year, everything included, for my college education.

$400 more per semester would kill even me, much less someone not as lucky.

And why are they profitable here at these utterly trivial prices (by American standards, that is - the prices are still quite considerable for me)?

If the company decides that the market isn't profitable, they simply withdraw. Why are they continuing?

Originally posted by Elok

They're expensive over here because, unlike almost every other book purchase, which textbook to use is not decided by the person actually shelling out cash. It's decided by the professor, who probably gets a free promotional copy anyway, or by the department, which gets bombarded with free promotional copies by the publisher as part of their marketing campaign. So the decision of which textbook to use is based on the number of impressive names on the authors list, the color and number of fancy charts, the sophistication of those little CD-ROM supplements nobody ever uses, and pretty much everything else except price.

Plus college bookstores typically add a hefty markup of their own, since they're the only non-online source for these things and are almost guaranteed to have buyers no matter how obscene their prices. Most people leave off buying books till the last minute, which rules out ordering used copies online, and there are only so many used copies anyway. They come out with new editions every year or so (rendering a whole generation of texts obsolete and allowing professors to add another line of text to their list of published works), and lots of students are too lazy to bother selling their old books online. They just sell back to the college store for a terrible price at the end of the semester. College then turns around and sells the "used" books for about 90% of the new price.

SUMMARY for the tldr crowd: "Market forces."

Very, very bad market, then.


Here, the university mandates the syllabus, but only recommends the textbooks. Colleges are affiliated to the university.

As there are three competing publishers in the local market, and a host of others from overseas, and since everyone uses a different book anyway, the professors teach what they have to, and the assignments and exercises are culled from their own repository or from different books from the library and then a copy is given to students.

[Imran Siddiqui]

SUMMARY for the tldr crowd: "Market forces."

Exactly. It's basic supply and demand. The demand is very high, because students HAVE to buy the books. There is, of course, a level of pricing to where students will pool resources and get one and make copies of the rest. That price hasn't really been reached for everyone yet.

Supply is, of course, low, because who else is going to buy these things?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by aneeshm

Here, the university mandates the syllabus, but only recommends the textbooks. Colleges are affiliated to the university.

As there are three competing publishers in the local market, and a host of others from overseas, and since everyone uses a different book anyway, the professors teach what they have to, and the assignments and exercises are culled from their own repository or from different books from the library and then a copy is given to students.

to be fair that probably makes the teaching and learning marginally more difficult than if everybody used the same text and could literally be on the same page on the syllabus. I'm not sure avoiding that minor hassle is worth extra hundreds of dollars per student though.

[Elok]

Uh, we pay tens of thousands per year for college. It's really quite obscene. Call it decadence if you want. :shrug: I'm just glad I'm finished with college. Now, if I could only get a freaking job...oh, and books are set and mandatory for most courses. Mandatory in name, at least. I've gone through courses where I didn't have to crack open the book once.

I suspect the market's still profitable because the book's already written (and sold at ludicrous American prices); they just get a tiny extra bonus printing and selling the same material locally, at Indian prices. Probably they hope that India, or portions thereof, will someday become wealthy enough to excrete money on education the way America does. They're building brand awareness, or something--I don't know economics that well.